MOSAIC

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Mosaic mean? 

• MOSAIC (noun)
  The noun MOSAIC has 6 senses:

1. art consisting of a design made of small pieces of colored stone or glass

2. viral disease in solanaceous plants (tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco) resulting in mottling and often shriveling of the leaves

3. a freeware browser

4. a pattern resembling a mosaic

5. transducer formed by the light-sensitive surface on a television camera tube

6. arrangement of aerial photographs forming a composite picture

  Familiarity information: MOSAIC used as a noun is common.

• MOSAIC (adjective)
  The adjective MOSAIC has 1 sense:

1. of or relating to Moses or the laws and writings attributed to him

  Familiarity information: MOSAIC used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MOSAIC (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Art consisting of a design made of small pieces of colored stone or glass

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("mosaic" is a kind of...):

art; fine art (the products of human creativity; works of art collectively)

Meronyms (parts of "mosaic"):

tessera (a small square tile of stone or glass used in making mosaics)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Viral disease in solanaceous plants (tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco) resulting in mottling and often shriveling of the leaves

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("mosaic" is a kind of...):

plant disease (a disease that affects plants)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mosaic"):

potato mosaic (a disease of the leaves of potato plants)

tobacco mosaic (a plant disease causing discoloration of the leaves of tobacco plants)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A freeware browser

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Instance hypernyms:

browser; web browser (a program used to view HTML documents)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A pattern resembling a mosaic

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("mosaic" is a kind of...):

form; pattern; shape (a perceptual structure)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Transducer formed by the light-sensitive surface on a television camera tube

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("mosaic" is a kind of...):

transducer (an electrical device that converts one form of energy into another)

Holonyms ("mosaic" is a part of...):

camera; television camera; tv camera (television equipment consisting of a lens system that focuses an image on a photosensitive mosaic that is scanned by an electron beam)

Sense 6

Meaning:

Arrangement of aerial photographs forming a composite picture

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

arial mosaic; mosaic; photomosaic

Hypernyms ("mosaic" is a kind of...):

exposure; photo; photograph; pic; picture (a representation of a person or scene in the form of a print or transparent slide or in digital format)

• MOSAIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of or relating to Moses or the laws and writings attributed to him

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

Mosaic Law

Pertainym:

Moses ((Old Testament) the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites from Egypt across the Red sea on a journey known as the Exodus; Moses received the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai)

 Context examples 

They appear as bright features just below the center of the mosaic, including a few above Ligeia Mare.

(Cassini's Final View of Titan's Northern Lakes and Seas, NASA)

The upper view is a mosaic made from two separate images obtained by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).

(Pluto’s ‘Halo’ Craters, NASA)

The failure of the chromosomes to disjoin and move to opposite poles during mitosis, by which could result in mosaic individual.

(Mitotic Nondisjunction, NCI Thesaurus)

The mosaic of color images was obtained in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

(NASA Issues 'Remastered' View of Jupiter's Moon Europa, NASA)

A new paper paints a more intricate picture of the mantle as a geochemically diverse mosaic, far different than the relatively uniform lava that eventually reaches the surface.

(Earth's mantle looks like a painting, National Science Foundation)

MLN usually arises from the interaction of two viruses: maize chlorotic mottle virus (MSMV) and sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV).

(Researchers model ways to control deadly maize disease, SciDev.Net)

Mutation of the gene is associated with colorectal cancer, mosaic variegated aneuploidy syndrome and premature chromatid separation trait and may be involved in other carcinomas.

(BUB1B wt Allele, NCI Thesaurus)

In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

We produced liverwort plants with mosaic pigment patterns – resembling military camouflage fatigues – that allowed us to compare pathogen resistance in pigmented and non-pigmented areas of the same plant and found the pigment provided some resistance to pathogen infection.

(Ancient defence strategy continues to protect plants from pathogens, University of Cambridge)

Scientists found the Ancient North Siberians generated the mosaic genetic make-up of contemporary people who inhabit a vast area across northern Eurasia and the Americas – providing the ‘missing link’ of understanding the genetics of Native American ancestry.

(DNA from 31,000-year-old milk teeth leads to discovery of new group of ancient Siberians, University of Cambridge)